


Newcomers in the Nursery

by matrixrefugee



Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Artifact fic, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An in-universe article on the advent of the David models and their impact on society</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Default Chapter

+J.M.J.+

TITLE: "Newcomers in the Nursery"

AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"

RATING: PG-13 (some references to child abuse)

ARCHIVE: Permission granted

FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?

SUMMARY: A simulated magazine article commenting on the impact of Cybertronics' latest creation

DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.

NOTES: I dedicate this fic to Pazu and to "CR Ermite" on ff.n. I've been trying to write some fics dealing with other "A.I." characters besides Joe, so I thought I'd write about David's siblings, and the effect they have on their world. But just any old typical fic didn't seem objective enough, so I resorted to the medium of a fake magazine article.

* * * * * *

*Newcomers in the Nursery*

"Time" magazine, September 12, 2138

By Cecie Martin

* * * * * *

In a play center in a large shopping mall, two boys with dark blond hair, about four and a half feet tall, perhaps eleven years old, dive into a ball pit, no differently than the other children romping around them. But display all the signs of childhood glee, but something absents itself from their behavior, as if both might be mentally challenged. One occassionally still sees children like this, whose parents have not conceded to the general trend toward perfecting the one child they may have, but this does not seem to be the case.

One of the boys emerges from the ball pit and gazes about him wth mild, blue eyes. The other like him, identical in all respects except clothing also emerges from the heap of of brightly colored balls that chime and flash colored lights as the other children tumble them about. They take no notice of the sounds and colors around them. Their eyes have met. Their smooth faces wrinkle slightly with puzzled frowns. They approach one another.

"Who are you?" one asks.

"I'm David," the other replies.

"That's my name too," the first boy says.

Are they twins seperated at birth, whose respective families happened to give them the same name? The slightly artificial gloss to their skins and the quietly unblinking gaze in their eyes only telegraph to the world what these boys are.

They are both Mechas, seperate units of a new line, the DA model, created by Cybertronics of New Jersey and known as "David", the product of an unusual new experiment in machine intelligence.

* * * * * * *

*Artificial Emotion?*

Normal Mechas may be able to emote, to behave as if they expressed emotion, but it goes no deeper than the very surface. Jab a Mecha's hand with a pin and it yelps with pain, but it does not affect them inwardly. They have no inner core of consciousness or "self" to be offended.

But the David line, the magnum opus of Cybertronics' chief designer Dr. Allen Hobby, and a tangible demonstration of the theories he expounded in his groundbreaking monograph "How Can A Robot Become Human?" is designed with this unique ability. Once the "parent" who has adopted one of these little Mechas activates certain centers via a switch on the back of the unit's neck and reads off to it in exact order a string of code words unique to that unit, "imprinting" circuits in that Mecha activate and remain so as long as the Mecha still functions.

From that point on, the Mecha depends upon this person for emotional interaction. With a happy obedience, they do the chores assigned to them. Even the simplest smile from their parent delights their innocent little heart.

Some critics have described the love shown by these little ones as "obsessive" and there have been some instances where a child Mecha has acted exclusivistly toward an imprinted parent, but often in these instances, the parent that imprinted showed obsessive tendencies themself, and/or the spouse of the imprinting parent had not imprinted the child-Mecha themself.

* * * * * *

*"His Love is Real, But He Is Not"*

The prototype unit, DA 001 was beta-tested and adopted by Henry and Monica Swinton, a young couple living in Camden, New Jersey. Henry worked in the Cybertronics' West Camden division as a marketing executive. The couple have a now eighteen year old son, Martin, who at age nine had been placed in cryostorage while a cure for the Sinclair's Syndrome that struck him was being researched. With Martin facing very uncertain medical prospects, Henry agreed to take home the David prototype unit when he was selected to field test it. Monica was reticent about having David around, but after only a week, she imprinted him. Henry, the more practical one waited before he imprinted since, he admits, he was uncertain about having the Mecha around and he did not consider himself truly qualified to assume the role of parent toward a child-Mecha. "I felt as if I were betraying Martin," he adds. "The project was admirable, but it was also bizarre."

When Martin's illness went into remission and he was sent home, David found he had a rival for Monica's affections. Martin, like any older child when the new baby comes home, continually challengedDavid's presence in the family, even prodding David into trying to eat, whcih caused the Mecha a mild mechanical freeze which left him undamaged.

It also appeared that something dangerous had emerged in David's behavioral programming: he cut Monica's forehead while trying to cut off a piece of her hair as she slept, then a few days later, at a pool party for Martin's birthday, David apparently tried to drown Martin. In light of these apparent threats, Henry ordered Monica to bring David back to Cybertronics. Unable to sacrifice her son, Monica abandoned David in a forest outside the town of Haddonfield.

When it came to light that David's actions had been misinterpreted - the hair-cutting was a prank gone awry, instigated by Martin; the near-drowning happened as a result of scuffle caused by one of Martin's friends trying to test David's DAS (Damage Avoidence System) - the Swintons turned to Cybertronics for aid in finding him. Dr. Hobby himself organized a simple plan: David had, after hearing Carlo Collodi's fairy tale "Pinocchio" and how the Blue Fairy had turned a wooden puppet into a live boy, had wanted to find the Blue Fairy himself so that she might do the same for him. Hobby uploaded to the Dr. Know franchise server a message that would lure David to Cybertronics' headquarters in Manhatten. David arrived there in the company of a male sex-Mecha, a Simulate City J-O 4679 who had escaped from a Flesh Fair that had captured the both of them. Not finding his Blue Fairy, David vanished, stil seeking her, according to the lover-Mecha.

* * * * * *

*A Love of Your Own*

Since the disappearance of the prototype three years ago, Dr. Hobby has remained in isolation in his Manhattan office; he has made himself utterly unavalible for interviews or queries, but other insiders on the David Project have revealed some pertinant information. At first Hobby nearly shelved the project and tried to retract the release, but with seventy units built and ready for release and several hundred more under construction, he could not casually discard a creation whose prototype was nearly two years in construction and programming, or else he would face the backlash from both investors and Cybertronics employees alike. For that matter, according to Theophane Cheung, Hobby's design chief, Hobby chose to design the prototype as a replica of his own son, David, who died of Sinclair's Syndrome complications twenty years ago at the age of twelve. "Some people accuse Hobby of suffering from resurrectionism, a condition where the bereaved tries to maintain the presence of the departed through a proxy, for example, a person who has lost their spouse might remarry later, but marry someone who looks like their late partner," Cheung maintains. "But there is a lot more going on than that. Dr. Hobby is well aware that the David prototype could never really take the place of his son, so he chose to redirect energy otherwise wasted on prolonged suffering and grief into helping other couples, other parents in similar situations, or couples who are unable to obtain a parental license."

Besides these people, business women seeking to avoid the inconvienience of pregnancy and of caring for an infant, are especially drawn to the DA line. One woman, an accountant of the present author's acquaintnance, states, "He's never cranky. He never whines when I have to work long hours. I don't have to hire a Nanny Mecha to keep an eye on him, not like my ex's son."

However, a "love of your own" comes with a price. A DA unit retails at about 700,000 NB, though due to demands, the price has come down to 350,000 NB. Units are availible with every shade of skin and hair and eyes natural to their Orga counterparts. A widowed male reporter in Rouge City had a unit customized with red-brown hair and blue-green eyes. "Too bad they come already named," he says. "But I suppose it's the same way if you're adopting an Orga kid." Cybertronics has announced that it is experimenting with changing the names of the units, even customizing them with a name chosen by a prospective parent. However, "[this] requires additional circuitry and modifying the imprinting parameters," says Cybertronics of Manhatten's neurosystems chief Lambert Meroveque. "The imprinter has to call the unit by name during the imprinting procedure, therefore, these chips have to be reprogrammed with the new name. It sounds like the complicated process that it is, but it has to be followed. There have been instances where an imprinter has tried to change the unit's name which has caused that unit to become confused."

* * * * * *

*Keep Me Safe*

But this confusion is the least of the woes inflicted on DA units. There is a dark side to this new model. Police in several states report that child Mechas are more likely to be abused than Orga children, most often by a non-imprinted parent or a disapproving relative Some are left with their emotional programming corrupted from negative feedback and have had to be dismantled. Others have been 'killed'. One Georgia man routinely molested his daughter's David until the Mecha ran away from home to escape the torment; the Mecha was later captured by a Flesh Fair and slowly destroyed, hacked apart, limb by limb.

The CRF has protested the creation of the DA line and has tried to urge Cybertronics to discontinue it, but the company has no intention of halting production. The line is selling so well they have had difficulty meeting the demand.

Police have also used David and Darlene models in successful sting operations, tracking predators of children. "It's much better than using an actual child or having an adult affected by dwarfism work undercover," reports Marcus Grune, Chicago's chief of police. "We use unimprinted models, therefore the bot is less likely to be emotionally affected by the operations, and it hasn't had a chance to attach to one person. It makes them a little more gullible that way."

And it is this gullibility that some utterly unscrupulous adults have exploited in the most horrendous ways imaginable. Rouge City "Broadsheet" photographer and crime reporter Halloran "Hal" McGeever discovered a club in the city's Red Zone which featured at least five Darlene models availible for customers to molest for a fee. "The thing may only be a bot, and I hope this keeps some people from abusing their own kid or someone else's," he states. "But there's a limit. These bots just were not designed for that kind of activity." There are even reports of some procurers having sexual performance chips installing in DA units, but this has not been confirmed.

* * * * * *

*Replacements?*

Besides the CRF but for very different reasons, perhaps the most vociferous opponent to the David/Darlene line has been ARM operative and Flesh Fair impresario Kevin "Lord" Johnson-Johnson. Following the "Haddonfield incident", Johnson has stated in no uncertain terms that some child-less couples, on purchasing a David or Darlene, may decide not to have a child of their own afterward. "Why have a whiny brat [defecating] on the rug when you can have a child that never eats?" he has been heard to say, sacrastically expressing these couples' possible sentiments.

So far most couples to adopt a DA model have been those unable to have a child of their own for whatever reason., either from sterility or from lacking one requirement for their eligibility for a parental license. Some otherwise fertile couples moght purchase a unit, but but their names will doubtlessly not be legion.

Even still, these little Mechas are far from being perfect. Some have suffered mechanical failures from faulty hydraulics and actuators; others have contracted viruses and ahd to be reprogrammed. Cybertronics repair crews report that of all the models Cybertronics carries, DA units are the ones most likely to show up for repairs and to have regular service inspections, like a human child being taken to the doctor for a check-up. Very, very few have been returned to the company for dismantling.

Which raises the question, when the imprinted parent(s) age and pass on, what is to become of their Mecha children? Will they be adopted by some family member of the deceased, or will Child Services deem it neccessary to dismantle orphaned chuld Mechas?

And what of a child Mecha belonging to a couple which divorces? Will these changes fall into the range of the child's discernment? How will it affect that Mecha? What new custody issues will arise on account of the emotional neediness of the Mecha child? Will the child be shuttled back and forth between parents like an Orga child? Or, like the pivotal B1-66-ER vs State of Massachusetts of 2124, will the case be regarded as a mere property dispute?

* * * * * *

As well-intentioned as Allen Hobby's project may have been, it opens a whole new Pandora's box of moral conundrums and legal issues dealing with Mecha-Orga relations. It may even reflect negatively on relations between adult Orgas and their flesh and blood children. This may well become the ultimate in the "child-as-chattel" argument of the 1800s and it is not alarmist to realize tha the same attitude shown towards child Mechas may be applied, inadvertantly, to Orga children.

It is a question that will continue to grow even as the children it concerns do not.

-

Ms. Martin is a copywriter living in Rouge City with her widowed brother-in-law and her companion-Mecha, a Simulate City J-O-4679.  



	2. Default Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR: Joshua Falken, "Matrix Refugee"

TITLE: "Newcomers in the Nursery" - Letters to the Editor

AUTHOR: Joshua Falken, "Matrix Refugee"

RATING: PG-13 (for anti-Mecha hate-speech)

ARCHIVE: Permission granted

FEEDBACK: Please? Please?

SUMMARY: A collection of comments on Ms. Martin's article

DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.

NOTES: I posted a challenge to the folks on the "A.I." fanfiction message group to write "letter to the editor"-type responses to this simulated magazine article. The results are fewer than I had hoped for, but that makes them all the more valuable.

From: To: Subject: "Newcomers in the Nursery"  
Hello Mr. Editor! smiley  
I just wish tell you and Miss Martin, the author of the article, whow much I loved the way that she dealed with this touchy subject. She did a great job with stating the questions that the existence of the Cybertronics's model David brought with.  
And as a agent of Sensient Property Crime Bureau's office in Rouge City, I sadly had to confirm the bad uses that the most criminal elements did of the innocence of these little mecha-childs and the growing reports of abuse that they suffers.  
I had to wonder if we had the right to create a being that would love us if we aren't capable to love eachother yet.. :-( The sad thing is that David and Darlene could go into the eternity suffering by our incapacity to understand that being a mother or a father is the greatset responsibility that we, Orga, could had and the responsability that we had to a child, whatever he or she are a Orga or a Mecha... sigh  
Thanks for your attention, )  
Rebecca C. Lovelace SPBD Special Agent

Transformers... more than meets the eyeee!

message from SPCB server

From: To: About: Useless article This so called "article" by Ms. Martin is pure trash: plain propaganda of Cybertronics to convince people to buy this ridiculous toy-boys!  
:-P Your magazine should had used the wasted space on important matters and not in over-grown supertoys!  
And Ms. Martin should be more worried about the kids kidnapped by the Population Control than with a bunch of chips and bolts!  
Josie Beller Rouge City DESTROY THE MECHAS!

(I admit that Beller was very rough, but considerating her temper it should be expected)  
And now a letter from a normal person: Dr. Jerrica Benton:

From: To: About: Article on "Mecha-childs"  
I want congratulated Ms. Cecie Martin for her marvelous article about the "David" line. She really researched the subject and the implications of such technology - I hope had people stop to realize the responsabilites what we had to them.  
And to me, the article struck home in special when it mentioned the innocence and caring that David felt for his imprinter - and I talk with knowledge of the subject, since that I adopted a David myself: I had suffered a terrible car crash where my husband died and I became severally hurt, and the doctors had to rebuild my body with cybernetic technology. Right now, I'm more Mecha than Orga.  
And with that everybody looked at me as an aberration... a freak. I was in a abyss of despair.  
But David saved me.  
He accepted me... for me. He didn't see me an aberration. He see me as a person, as his mother. And I can't tell how much I loved him, for accepting me and for allow me to love him.  
Thanks in reading my letter,  
Dr. Jerrica Phillips-Benton  
Roboticist-Chief - Nanite Enginnering Positronics Systems, Inc. - Boulder, Colorado

I just wanted to send you a few words of gratitude for running the article "Newcomers in the Nursery", about Mecha-childs and their impact on society. The article brings me hope since it helps to raise awareness of families with Mecha-childs, families like mine. I'm the proud father of a David unit, whom I adopted last year. He's been a comfort and a joy to me since my wife passed away some years ago. We who have let one of these little ones into our homes and our hearts aren't out to destroy our species: the death of my wife was so sudden and devastating that I have not been emotionally strong enough to try starting another relationship. But adopting David has been one of the wisest decisions I ever made: caring for him and showing him the world has gotten me out of myself and helped me get my sorrow into perspective.

My next challenge, which your article will help me approach with better resources, is finding a woman who will accept David and love him as much as I do. I've already ordered reprints of the article and will distribute them as they are needed. Hopefully I won't have to give away too many!

Thank you again for running this article

Francis J.X. Sweitz Rouge City, PA

I had heard about child Mechas and I recently learned that a niece of mine had "adopted" one, but I was not aware of the tremendous effect these Mechas have had on our society. It gives one cause for concern: You can't help questioning the sanity of someone who purchases one of them and "loves" it as if it were a real child. My godchild has "settled down" with a male lover-Mecha, which I thought was unbalanced. But wasting your time and energy and resources on a "child" that isn't a real child males me wonder if these people should seek professional help.

I hate to sound like an alarmist, but I can't help wondering how many people will avoid having children and buy a child Mecha instead, and what kind of effect this will have on our aging population?

Seamus "Shay" Diocletian Westhillston, MA

I read your magazine story about kid Mechas with my auntie Jeanine. I think it is great that there are Mechas like this because then maybe people will learn to like Mechas and treat them like people instead of like things. How can someone be a thing when they look like a person? I think it would be neat to have a kid Mecha because then I could have a little brother or sister to play with and they'd never be cranky or naughty. My mom and dad would like that too and then we'd all be happy. So I'm saving up my allowance to buy one.

Thank you for the nice story.

Your friend,  
Terry Salla, age 10 New Manhatten, New York  



End file.
